The Pegasus Academy of Fine Arts, by siegeofangels (song and dance challenge)
Title: The Pegasus Academy of Fine Arts
Author: siegeofangels
Vital stats: ~1000 words. PG-13 for language. Genfic with slash coda.
Thanks to cincodemaygirl for audiencing and requesting the bonus scene.
Summary: Scenes from a year at the Pegasus Academy of Fine Arts.
Dear Mom,
The Pegasus program is adequately challenging. I'm working on a piece by Saint-Saens.
***
"What, you want to hang out while I practice?" Rodney says as they're walking toward the music building.
"Why not?" John says. "Anyone tries to find me I'll be in the last place they look."
Rodney shrugs. "Your funeral," he says, because listening to someone else practice is always incredibly frustrating for him, but if John wants to he's welcome to hole up in one of the dungeon-like practice rooms while Rodney tries to muster up an emotional response to Rachmaninoff that isn't hate.
John settles into a corner of the tiny room, propping his papers on his knees and starts to cover huge swaths of the pages with blue highlighter.
Rodney pulls out the Rachmaninoff, because if he doesn't make himself do it first, he'll spend all of his time on the glorious sweeping flurries of the Saint-Saens and get bitched out later for neglecting the natural emotional fucking beauty of the most boring piece he's ever played.
John actually falls asleep, his head propped in his hands, while Rodney plays; Rodney's's rummaging in his bag for the Saint-Saens, sees John dozing, and gets a wonderful, wonderful idea.
Very, very quietly, he draws out the sheet music and arranges it before him. He takes a deep breath, pausing with his hands ten inches above the keyboard, evil-genius style, for maximum dramatic effect, and crashes down into the music, making the practice room explode with the thunder of the Second Piano Concerto.
There's an explosion of paper in the corner; John has jolted awake and fumbled his script, pages flying all over the floor.
"Shit, Rodney," John yells, "what'd that piano ever do to you?"
***
Yes, the food here is fine. I'm eating well.
***
"Chickpeas," John says, pointing to his salad and nodding like he's trying to convince himself. "Where it's at."
John and Elizabeth diet competitively, although both of them just say that they're "watching what they eat." Elizabeth doesn't eat bread; John's salads, like his early-morning runs, are part of his almost militaristic routine.
Elizabeth smiles brightly (too brightly, even for her) and forks up some lettuce of her own. "Dip the tines of your fork in the dressing instead of pouring it on top. You use less that way."
It's getting close to the winter ballet. Two more days and she'll be using salt and pepper instead of the evil, evil caloric dressing; they've seen it happen before. Rodney exchanges a horrified look with Ronon, whose own plate is a monument to the glory of the complex carbohydrate. They've both learned the hard way to keep out of this particular conversation, so Rodney stuffs potatoes into his mouth and makes a conscious effort to not say anything.
He also makes a conscious effort to not steal John's roll. It's progress.
***
The art projects are up--you'll have to see them when you come.
***
It's nice out today, the first really nice day in spring, and Rodney turns the corner and hears a tink, tink, tink.
It's Ronon, in the boneyard of the art building, carefully applying hammer to chisel to stone in the sun, wearing protective goggles but no shirt, looking like a sculpture himself.
Rodney chokes and coughs and gasps in a huge lungful of pollen and sneezes and coughs again, and hopes he can pass it off as allergies. Ronon looks up at the explosions and waves the hammer at Rodney, who weakly raises a hand back and swipes at his nose to cover.
The boneyard is littered with trash, scraps that will one day be art; Rodney wonders if Ronon's ever met anything he couldn't weld, carve, mold, sand, or staple-gun into beauty.
Radek takes the opposite approach, multi-hued where Ronon tends toward monochromatic, fingertips instead of tools, two-dimensional Impressionistic swoops on canvas or paper.
Rodney sees Elizabeth at dinner that night with smudged, colored fingerprints at the small of her back and thinks, Ah, he's back to pastels again.
***
Performances are in full swing.
***
It's not that John's a bad actor, Rodney thinks--obviously, if he were bad he wouldn't be here, playing Romeo in torn sleeves and eyeliner--but he does have his cringeworthy and inexplicable and just plain bizarre moments. Beside him, Elizabeth mutters, "Oh, my God, what is he doing with his hands?"
As far as Rodney can figure it out, things happened like this: Elizabeth more or less hand-picked him when he was new and didn't know anybody and still impressed by a girl in ballet slippers--most likely because she didn't already have a pianist and those are always useful. John came with her as a sort of a package deal because John and Elizabeth were best friends or sisters or something; everyone else seemed to come along for the ride, and before Rodney knew it he was at their table in the cafeteria and he was joking with Radek and madly in love with Teyla in a very platonic way because she's completely capable of kicking his ass: Teyla's a brown belt of some sort--singers don't have to worry so much about a hand injury as the rest of them.
Rodney's own contribution to the group was his roommate Carson. Carson plays the oboe.
Enough said, really.
On the stage, John falls to his knees and Rodney will say this for him: John dies tragically like nobody's business.
After the show, Elizabeth drags them all into posing for a photograph, all seven of them crowded together, tired and stressed in the middle of finals--Ronon has a bruise on his arm and John's still got fake blood on his shirt, and you can kind of tell Teyla's thinking about American history--but when Rodney looks at it later, after his own recital, he thinks, "Look at us. We made it," a whole year of bloody toes and not smashing Carson's oboe--chickpeas and Rach-fucking-maninoff; when he can breathe again, he looks at it and smiles.
***
I've enclosed a program of performances for the last couple of weeks of school. I'll see you soon.
And yes, Mom, I am making friends.
THE END
*****
Optional slash coda: John/Rodney, PG, ~400 words.
John's wheedled Rodney into helping him practice lines, so they're sitting on the floor of Rodney's practice room, squashed into the corner--the only place where the piano isn't.
Rodney plays with his pen while he looks at the script and says, "I don't know why I always have to be the girl."
John's says, "Because Romeo's my part, dumbass."
They start the scene and Rodney accidentally sproings the pen under the piano--John rolls his eyes, but Rodney has to be doing something with his hands, and if he doesn't have the pen he'll probably whap John in the face gesticulating--so he crawls in to get it, still trying to do his lines, paper in one hand, reading in the dark.
John follows him in--oh, god, John's eeled in there next to Rodney and grabbed his free hand at the bit about the pilgrims.
Rodney tries to do four things at once--wondering where the damn pen went, it's his good one, the one that doesn't break no matter how many times he takes it apart; saying, "Saints do not move;" trying to shove John aside because he's probably on top of the pen; discovering that lean runners who watch what they eat aren't necessarily light, and slipping his hand across John.
And then he realizes that he's got one arm around John and holding his hand besides, lying on industrial carpet in the shadow of the piano in a locked room, which, wow. Is really not somewhere he thought he'd be when he woke up this morning.
Screw it, Rodney thinks, because he knows there's a kiss coming up, and John's got this look in his eye that's more intense than anything he's ever done on the stage.
So before John can kiss him and claim it's part of the stage directions, Rodney grabs him by the back of the neck and pulls them together, and maybe that was a little too much force--he tastes blood--although it doesn't seem like either of them really mind.
What with one thing and another, they never do finish reading the scene.
Author: siegeofangels
Vital stats: ~1000 words. PG-13 for language. Genfic with slash coda.
Thanks to cincodemaygirl for audiencing and requesting the bonus scene.
Summary: Scenes from a year at the Pegasus Academy of Fine Arts.
Dear Mom,
The Pegasus program is adequately challenging. I'm working on a piece by Saint-Saens.
***
"What, you want to hang out while I practice?" Rodney says as they're walking toward the music building.
"Why not?" John says. "Anyone tries to find me I'll be in the last place they look."
Rodney shrugs. "Your funeral," he says, because listening to someone else practice is always incredibly frustrating for him, but if John wants to he's welcome to hole up in one of the dungeon-like practice rooms while Rodney tries to muster up an emotional response to Rachmaninoff that isn't hate.
John settles into a corner of the tiny room, propping his papers on his knees and starts to cover huge swaths of the pages with blue highlighter.
Rodney pulls out the Rachmaninoff, because if he doesn't make himself do it first, he'll spend all of his time on the glorious sweeping flurries of the Saint-Saens and get bitched out later for neglecting the natural emotional fucking beauty of the most boring piece he's ever played.
John actually falls asleep, his head propped in his hands, while Rodney plays; Rodney's's rummaging in his bag for the Saint-Saens, sees John dozing, and gets a wonderful, wonderful idea.
Very, very quietly, he draws out the sheet music and arranges it before him. He takes a deep breath, pausing with his hands ten inches above the keyboard, evil-genius style, for maximum dramatic effect, and crashes down into the music, making the practice room explode with the thunder of the Second Piano Concerto.
There's an explosion of paper in the corner; John has jolted awake and fumbled his script, pages flying all over the floor.
"Shit, Rodney," John yells, "what'd that piano ever do to you?"
***
Yes, the food here is fine. I'm eating well.
***
"Chickpeas," John says, pointing to his salad and nodding like he's trying to convince himself. "Where it's at."
John and Elizabeth diet competitively, although both of them just say that they're "watching what they eat." Elizabeth doesn't eat bread; John's salads, like his early-morning runs, are part of his almost militaristic routine.
Elizabeth smiles brightly (too brightly, even for her) and forks up some lettuce of her own. "Dip the tines of your fork in the dressing instead of pouring it on top. You use less that way."
It's getting close to the winter ballet. Two more days and she'll be using salt and pepper instead of the evil, evil caloric dressing; they've seen it happen before. Rodney exchanges a horrified look with Ronon, whose own plate is a monument to the glory of the complex carbohydrate. They've both learned the hard way to keep out of this particular conversation, so Rodney stuffs potatoes into his mouth and makes a conscious effort to not say anything.
He also makes a conscious effort to not steal John's roll. It's progress.
***
The art projects are up--you'll have to see them when you come.
***
It's nice out today, the first really nice day in spring, and Rodney turns the corner and hears a tink, tink, tink.
It's Ronon, in the boneyard of the art building, carefully applying hammer to chisel to stone in the sun, wearing protective goggles but no shirt, looking like a sculpture himself.
Rodney chokes and coughs and gasps in a huge lungful of pollen and sneezes and coughs again, and hopes he can pass it off as allergies. Ronon looks up at the explosions and waves the hammer at Rodney, who weakly raises a hand back and swipes at his nose to cover.
The boneyard is littered with trash, scraps that will one day be art; Rodney wonders if Ronon's ever met anything he couldn't weld, carve, mold, sand, or staple-gun into beauty.
Radek takes the opposite approach, multi-hued where Ronon tends toward monochromatic, fingertips instead of tools, two-dimensional Impressionistic swoops on canvas or paper.
Rodney sees Elizabeth at dinner that night with smudged, colored fingerprints at the small of her back and thinks, Ah, he's back to pastels again.
***
Performances are in full swing.
***
It's not that John's a bad actor, Rodney thinks--obviously, if he were bad he wouldn't be here, playing Romeo in torn sleeves and eyeliner--but he does have his cringeworthy and inexplicable and just plain bizarre moments. Beside him, Elizabeth mutters, "Oh, my God, what is he doing with his hands?"
As far as Rodney can figure it out, things happened like this: Elizabeth more or less hand-picked him when he was new and didn't know anybody and still impressed by a girl in ballet slippers--most likely because she didn't already have a pianist and those are always useful. John came with her as a sort of a package deal because John and Elizabeth were best friends or sisters or something; everyone else seemed to come along for the ride, and before Rodney knew it he was at their table in the cafeteria and he was joking with Radek and madly in love with Teyla in a very platonic way because she's completely capable of kicking his ass: Teyla's a brown belt of some sort--singers don't have to worry so much about a hand injury as the rest of them.
Rodney's own contribution to the group was his roommate Carson. Carson plays the oboe.
Enough said, really.
On the stage, John falls to his knees and Rodney will say this for him: John dies tragically like nobody's business.
After the show, Elizabeth drags them all into posing for a photograph, all seven of them crowded together, tired and stressed in the middle of finals--Ronon has a bruise on his arm and John's still got fake blood on his shirt, and you can kind of tell Teyla's thinking about American history--but when Rodney looks at it later, after his own recital, he thinks, "Look at us. We made it," a whole year of bloody toes and not smashing Carson's oboe--chickpeas and Rach-fucking-maninoff; when he can breathe again, he looks at it and smiles.
***
I've enclosed a program of performances for the last couple of weeks of school. I'll see you soon.
And yes, Mom, I am making friends.
THE END
*****
Optional slash coda: John/Rodney, PG, ~400 words.
John's wheedled Rodney into helping him practice lines, so they're sitting on the floor of Rodney's practice room, squashed into the corner--the only place where the piano isn't.
Rodney plays with his pen while he looks at the script and says, "I don't know why I always have to be the girl."
John's says, "Because Romeo's my part, dumbass."
They start the scene and Rodney accidentally sproings the pen under the piano--John rolls his eyes, but Rodney has to be doing something with his hands, and if he doesn't have the pen he'll probably whap John in the face gesticulating--so he crawls in to get it, still trying to do his lines, paper in one hand, reading in the dark.
John follows him in--oh, god, John's eeled in there next to Rodney and grabbed his free hand at the bit about the pilgrims.
Rodney tries to do four things at once--wondering where the damn pen went, it's his good one, the one that doesn't break no matter how many times he takes it apart; saying, "Saints do not move;" trying to shove John aside because he's probably on top of the pen; discovering that lean runners who watch what they eat aren't necessarily light, and slipping his hand across John.
And then he realizes that he's got one arm around John and holding his hand besides, lying on industrial carpet in the shadow of the piano in a locked room, which, wow. Is really not somewhere he thought he'd be when he woke up this morning.
Screw it, Rodney thinks, because he knows there's a kiss coming up, and John's got this look in his eye that's more intense than anything he's ever done on the stage.
So before John can kiss him and claim it's part of the stage directions, Rodney grabs him by the back of the neck and pulls them together, and maybe that was a little too much force--he tastes blood--although it doesn't seem like either of them really mind.
What with one thing and another, they never do finish reading the scene.